Memorial Service Held For Slain Nun

About a thousand parents, teachers and students from Holy Cross Academy in Kendall gathered on campus Friday for the memorial service honoring Sister Michelle Lewis, whose funeral took place in Ravenna, Ohio, March 31.

Lewis, 39, was stabbed to death almost two weeks ago on the campus. Mykhaylo Kofel, an 18-year-old Ukrainian who was studying to be a monk at the academy, is being held in connection with the murder.

The memorial service, the traditional Byzantine Catholic liturgy for the dead, was conducted in a gated shrine on the west end of the campus while those attending sat outside under a metal pavilion.

From time to time Father Abbot Gregory F.W. Wendt and a Ukrainian monk-in-training stepped outside the gold iron gate and stood on an ornately painted stage to speak or read to the audience. But mostly the service was held out of view.

Wendt told students, parents and teachers that they ”had all experienced a sudden, terrible and totally unexpected loss” in Lewis’ death. He explained her murder as something they ”may never be able to understand,” but said it should help to remember that ”God gave humans free will to do what is good or what is sinful.”

”Sister Michelle’s mother asked me to pray for the young man who committed this deed. I in turn ask you to pray for him so that he might turn to God and beg for forgiveness,” said Wendt.

He then talked about Lewis’ role at the school, recalling how she tutored a student all summer in remedial math, ”something she disliked but did,” how she had worked all night to get report cards ready after a computer failure. He spoke of her ”great, rolling laugh,” her ”love of calculus” and her ”abiding love for the monastic way of life.”

Officiating along with Wendt was assistant abbot Damian Gibault, Father Ivan Chirovsky from Assumption Ukrainian Catholic Church, and an unnamed monk-in-training – one of the four remaining at the school.

The four monks lived with Kofel to the south of the gated shrine in a two-story converted barn connected to the school’s chapel by a long hallway.

Wendt said that he had decided on the Byzantine Catholic service rather than the Latin Catholic service because it was ”the rite dearly loved by Sister Michelle.”

Lewis’ mother told him, he said, that her daughter had called her in Ohio the week before her death to say that ”she was very happy at Holy Cross Academy.”

The memorial service marked the first time since the death of Lewis that the public was allowed on campus. Visitors were encouraged to go in the chapel on the southwest end of the campus to see colorful religious scenes on the walls and ceiling, chronicling the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Red candles in memory of the dead, including Lewis, burned on several altars.

Visitors, however, were not allowed near the east end of the campus, where Lewis lived and was murdered.